The GUI of many NI effects (Bite, Choral, Raum, Replika...) does not show graphics.

Arthur Dent 24 · 2024-01-01T19:08:47+00:00

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Arthur Dent 24

Hallo community!

I have encountered a problem that I can't solve on my own. Therefore I'd like to ask for help on this point.

This is a screenshot of how it looks when I open the effect VSTs in Ableton Live. It looks the same in Reaper DAW.

The Solid Bus Comp for comparison looks like it shoud, I think.

Kontakt 7 and Reactor 6 look normal, as all other VSTs do.

The GUIs of nearly all NI Effects do not load the graphics. I even found the .png file of the desired graphics (in this case th effect "Raum") in the folder

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Native Instruments\Raum\PAResources\image\Raum\MST_plugin.png

I have installed, de-installed and re-installed everything several times. Including Native Access. I also deleted every entry in the Windows Registry by hand that sounded like Native Instruments after de-installing Access, Kontakt, Kontakt 7, Reaktor, and many Effects.

Now to what I've probably done wrong:

After upgrading from 'Komplete Select' to 'Standard' my main harddrive was not not big enough. So I decided to outsource the content to another hdd.

The paths in Native Access now look like this:

Native Instruments - Native Access File Paths 2.png

The NI-help-site suggest that you use an external storage in case the content is too large for the main storage. So, I think this should be possible, right? ( F:\ is a 2TB internal SSD )

Another point that might cause problems (because I remember encountering some flicker of VSTs in the past) is that I use a G-Sync kompatible (but not cerified) monitor (acer xz321qu) with 144 Hz. Though I don't think that this is causing the problem. There is no flicker, just missing textures (bitmaps). The used graphics card is a NVIDIA RTX 2070. The drivers are up to date.

I would guess that some entry in the registry or in a file does not point where it should.

The effect VSTs simply seem to not find the necessary pictures for the GUI.

Or is it a matter of rigths? Does the VST not have enough rights to access the data?

I've spent soo many hours now. I can't figure it out.

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Arthur Dent 24

Ladies and gentlemen,

after more than 3 weeks of doctoring around on this problem, I'm a little bit proud to announce that I have found a solution.

I may be the only one who had this strange GUI corruption, but in case anyone else had or has it, here comes the clou:

It was a Windows environment variable. (accessible by right-click on Windows icon on the left bottom, select 'System' and in the next window select 'Advanced system settings' and then click on the 'environment variables' )

I had an entry 'QSG_RHI', which was set to 1. But it has to be 0 ('zero'). It is a setting that determines the 'Qt Rendering Hardware Interface', for those who are interested...

And yes, I'm a programmer, and I had some version of 'Qt' (a framework to develop GUIs) installed in the past. Not sure if the setting comes from there. When encountering problems with the NI plugins, I uninstalled Qt, but apparently this did not solve the problem.

So, and that's how it looks now:

The 'Flair' plugin has this black box in the top, but compared to the previous state, I'm more than pleased with the actual state. Finally I can use those plug-ins. 😀

And finally, if someone else in the future is wondering if his hardware or hardware-settings may be the problem:

Currently I'm running this with a 2560*1440 resolution, on 144Hz framerate. G-Sync is enabled. Also the 'High-DPI' setting, and the 'auto scaling feature' in Ableton are enabled. And finally everything works nice.

And now I'm going to make some music. 😁

PS: Just a suggestion for the developers: Maybe check the above mentioned value automatically in 'Native Access' when installing (or verifying, this would be the next suggestion 😉 ) the affected plug-ins.

All comments

Sunborn

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/20767/the-gui-of-many-ni-effects-bite-choral-raum-replika-does-not-show-graphics

Regardless your second question about Content relocation, yes, your settings as shown in your image are correct.

About the effects GUI problem, i think those 144 Hz is the source of the problem, this resolution is too high, at least for some apps. Kontakt and Reaktor can handle it because they have brand new versions, but those effects are a bit old for this. Until they upgraded to a newer version try lower resolutions, i can't see another way.

Arthur Dent 24

Hello Sunborn,

thank you for your reply and for the suggestion!

I usually use a resolution of 2560x1440 at 144 Hz refreshrate.

Now I tried the following settings:

1920x1080 at 60 Hz
1920x1080 at 120 Hz
1920x1080 at 144 Hz
2560x1440 at 60 Hz
2560x1440 at 120 Hz

With each setting I restarted Ableton Live and opened an instrument and added several NI effect VSTs like Raum, Flair etc.

The GUI problem always existed like I described it in the last post.

I also disabled G-Sync compatibility in the NVidia system settings.

Sadly no change.

Sunborn

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/121789#Comment_121789

That's really strange,

1920x1080 at 60 Hz and 2560x1440 at 60 Hz should work, that's my resolution too and never had any problems..

so, it is something else... i will come back here, if i get another idea...

oh btw check if your NVIDIA has a setting "wait for vertical sync" (or something similar, but not the G-Sync) and disable it... then, try again

Arthur Dent 24

I disabled 'vertical sync' in the NVIDIA settings while running 60 Hz refreshrate. And I found an option 'disable HiDPI' in Ableton Live.

Does not change anything regarding the visual problem.

I still think the problem may be caused by something unwanted that ocurred while moving the content directories and re-installing and de-installing stuff. When the effects did not work as intended, I did a lot of re-installing as it is recommended on the help-sites.

Native Access tells me that everything is fine:

And I actually am not sure at what time the effects did work with the intended graphical user interface. I'm somehow sure I opened 'NI Raum' before. But I cannot remember how long ago that was... (probably a year ago)

The plugins do work. It is just not a pleasure at all to use them because the knobs and the settings can barely be seen.

The way I see it is that something gets in the way when the .png-image for the plugin should be loaded.

All other plugins from other companies work like a charm. The whole Arturia V Collection, and about 50 other plugins.

Maybe I finally have to get into VST programming to understand the background better.

Arthur Dent 24

Update:

I reorganised my VST and VST3 folders and did a reinstall of nearly everything except the content files. I also deleted the Ableton Live plugin cache and did a rescan. No change.

While I was searching for information I noticed that the problematic effects and instruments (Massive X is also looking a bit strange) are labeled 'Komplete' effects and instruments.

So I may have narrowed the problem down to also beeing a Komplete Kontrol problem. That eliminates any DAW involvement.

I've opened Massive X and Raum in the Komplete Kontrol standalone. And it looks like this:

Before the screenshots I've created an NVIDIA profile for the Komplete Kontrol.exe and I've turned everything off. This is how it looks like: (sorry for the german language there. 'Aus' means off 😃)

VSTs with strange looking GUIs at this point are:

Bite, Choral, Dirt, Flair, Freak, Massive X, Phasis, Raum, Replika, Replika XT

VSTs with OK GUIs are:

Battery 4,Driver, FM8, Kontakt 7, Massive, Reaktor 6, Solid Bus Comp, Solid Dynamics, Solid EQ, Supercharger GT, Transient Master

I don't see what else I could do at this point.

To me this all looks like a bug. But why is no one else having it?

Does the Native Instruments Support read this entries, or should I make an error report somewhere else?

Jeremy_NI

@Arthur Dent 24 I see that you submitted a support request, this is the way to go, I believe, my colleagues will need to get a deeper look in the issue, they will get back to you as soon as possible.

iNate

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/122188#Comment_122188

Seems like the plug-ins that have a scaling setting are problematic, while those without it are fine.

Have you tried changing the scaling in the plug-in drop-down menu to see if that changes anything?

Arthur Dent 24

Hi @iNate ,

thank you for your suggestion!

I actually would not have noticed that these plug-ins have a drop down menu because due to the visual glitch / malfunctioning GUI, there is no visual indication of a drop down menu. By clicking around on the top I managed to open this menu.

Interestingly, the default setting is 125% on all of those plug-ins. (my Windows 10 scaling setting is set at 100%. Usually I run 2560*1440, but I also tried 1920*1080)

I changed it to all possible settings, and also set the default setting to different values.

They did change in size, but sadly the graphical glitch was always there.

In the "Komplete Kontrol" standalone app, there is no drop down menue available for the plug-ins. At least I could not manage to open any by clicking around everywhere.

So, sadly no solution for the problem, but the hint of the resizability of those affected plug-ins may probably help at some point. So, thanks again!

Dreamfoil

Having a similar problem, though only with Flair, for some reason (Replika, Choral, GR6, MX etc. are fine). Didn't have this black box when I used it the last time.

Looks like this in both my DAWs (BWS and FLS). Changing plugin scaling does nothing.

Plugins, OS and Graphics drivers up to date.

Then again, I also have experienced GUI glitches with NI plugins before on my old system. Only NI plugins.

Arthur Dent 24

@Dreamfoil

Thanks for mentioning the problem with the Flair plugin!

By the way, I came across another thread about Flair while I was searching for solutions:

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/11535/flair-effect-plugin-black-spot/p1

Sadly, there seems to be no fix for that problem yet.

Arthur Dent 24

Ladies and gentlemen,

after more than 3 weeks of doctoring around on this problem, I'm a little bit proud to announce that I have found a solution.

I may be the only one who had this strange GUI corruption, but in case anyone else had or has it, here comes the clou:

I had an entry 'QSG_RHI', which was set to 1. But it has to be 0 ('zero'). It is a setting that determines the 'Qt Rendering Hardware Interface', for those who are interested...

So, and that's how it looks now:

The 'Flair' plugin has this black box in the top, but compared to the previous state, I'm more than pleased with the actual state. Finally I can use those plug-ins. 😀

And finally, if someone else in the future is wondering if his hardware or hardware-settings may be the problem:

And now I'm going to make some music. 😁

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